


The Transmogrification of Warlock Dowling

by Spiderheart



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: DOCTOR BITCHCRAFT [airhorn noise], Drag Queens, Gen, Gender Identity, Identity, That Really Intense Phase When You're 13, Third and Non-Binary Genders, Witches
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-09-28 06:27:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20421407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spiderheart/pseuds/Spiderheart
Summary: So, whateverdidhappen to Warlock Dowling?





	1. Etymology

Warlock found out what his name meant around the age of thirteen, well after Nanny Ashtoreth and Brother Francis had left. It was, in fact well after the Apocalypse-that-wasn’t, and Warlock felt rather betrayed, especially since he’d found out because of one of the strange, intense girls from school, who wore black eyeliner smeared all over her eyes, and had a too-loud voice and too-short temper, had been the one to tell him.

‘It means,’ she said, ‘a _male witch_; but my Dama says,’ she went on (Dama was her parent, who was ‘not a mama and not a daddy, _thank you_’) ‘That you can call yourself a “witch” if you are one, and that having separate words only enforces the gender binary. Are you a witch?’ she asked, afterward, still separating out her smarties by colour.

‘Uhh… we’re Baptist?’ Warlock said. ‘But Idunno if _I’m_ Baptist,’ he said quickly, kind of wanting Moissanite to think he was cool, because they had bonded over both having weird names that kids made fun of, and having weird families, and he didn’t want her to go away.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I get that. You’re supposed to pick your own religion.’

‘Is that another thing your Dama says?’

‘Yep,’ she said, popping the P.


	2. One's First Teenage Rebellion

‘What do witches _do_, anyways?’ Warlock asked, adding an S to the end of ‘anyway’ because Moissanite did it, and said that was a thing that was part of The Californian American Dialect, which her Dama spoke fluently. California was _very_ much cooler than Washington DC or Vermont or even Virginia, which was where Warlock’s parents were from, so he started doing it.

Moissanite looked over at him, from her swing. ‘Why?’ she asked, suddenly suspicious. ‘Want to make fun, do you? Want to throw things at me?’

‘What? No,’ Warlock said, taken aback. ‘Why would I do that?’

‘That’s what people _do_ to witches. They either think you’re just mentally ill and your religion is fake, or they try to murder you.’

‘Damn,’ said Warlock, for whom ‘damn’ was quite a new word to say, and very cool and grown-up. ‘That sucks. I just wondered because, like, you said you were a witch, and that’s a religion, right? Baptists… go to church, and that’s really boring.’

‘Witches don’t do boring stuff,’ Moissanite assured him, with a superior sort of air that said she was very proud of being a witch, because it was _fun_. ‘You really want to be a witch?’

‘Yeah, sure,’ Warlock said.

‘You can’t say “yeah _sure_”, you have to be really, really serious. It’s _hard_, because people are really mean about it.’

‘People already think I’m some kind of witch, though,’ Warlock pointed out. ‘I figure I better just go ahead and do that.’

‘Nominative Determinationism,* I think that’s called. Where you end up being something because of your name.’ Moissanite got off her swing, because a very distinctive pink sunhat had come to pick her up. Moissanite paused, as she shouldered her backpack in the shape of a cat with a moon on its forehead—from some old anime she watched, Warlock remembered. ‘You wanna come home with me? Dama can explain The Craft to you on the train.’

_The Craft_ sounded so _cool_. Warlock got off his swing, and said, ‘Yeah, okay,’ before he really thought much about it. He could just text his parents on the way there.

Or not, he thought, rebelliously. He could just… come home, and say something like, ‘I was out with friends.’ He was a _teenager_ now, he was allowed to break rules and go around by himself, right? Well, not _allowed_, but sort of… ineffably prone. He remembered Brother Francis and Nanny Ashtoreth teaching him that word, and it was still one that made him think of them. _Ineffable_. Yeah. He was ineffably rebellious. That meant unstoppable, but _more_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Moissanite is, of course, referring to 'nominative determinism'; but, like her Dama, had trouble with very long words sometimes gaining or losing syllables. Dama often said this was part of dyslexia, and never gave Moissanite a hard time over it, because they had been given a very hard time as a child, and did not want to put that feeling on their daughter.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments? Questions? Bonus Features? Come over to [my discord](https://discord.gg/Mvygfnn)!


End file.
